Hello to all those faithfully reading and hopefully enjoying this effort to make even the worst horror movie more watcha... aw, screw that - I'm not that good. If a movie makes you cringe because yet another batch of unlikable teens that are pushing 30 are inching toward their deaths, having a party no one does anywhere ever, a paranormal movie is boring you to tears with unending pans of empty rooms, or thanks to CGI technology when people finally bite it, their blood squirts everywhere except on the victim, the ground, the people next to them... you're in good company and this is the right place for you.

Friday, September 13, 2013

WELL THAT MOVIE SUCKED... WHAT? IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE A CEREBRAL HORROR FILM AND ALL THE CRITICS LIKED IT? BUT I JUST WATCHED IT AND... WHAT? GOT A HIGH RATING ON ROTTEN TOMATOES? BUT IT S.U.C.K.E.D! OKAY MAYBE I WASN'T PAYING CLOSE ATTENTION... WHAT? IT'S SUBTLE HORROR, NO JUMP OUT SCARES? YOU HAVE TO WATCH FOR CLUES? SIGH. I'LL WATCH IT AGAIN... NOPE, IT STILL SUCKED...

Resolution (2012)

The last thing on Earth I ever want to see is yet another 'theory' on the Lizzie Borden story, especially the film called Lizzie (2012). What does that have to do with this movie? Well if you want to see a movie of choppy images, slapped together with no real conclusion, you can watch either movie. In the first, the characters drink wine like it's water. In the second the addict smokes crack like it's... I don't know. It's just that one is in your face, the other is 'subtle'. In other words, If you don't pay close attention to either movie you're not going to 'get it'. Well folks, even paying attention might not save you here. And don't worry about it - despite what the 'experts' say, you're not missing much.

STILL a better love story than Twilight...

Okay I'll admit the first time I watched it I basically got 'family man tries to save crack addicted friend and they both argue and curse a lot and there's no ending'. Oh and a reference to an American Indian reservation (I'm Cherokee and I still say what the hell is wrong with just saying 'Indian'? It's not like it's a dirty word or anything), crack dealers coming after him, one friend wandering around finding a bunch of junk, and some reference to Croatians and people from all over disappearing (or being buried) there. Nothing interesting. A little different, but hardly nail biting stuff. The only clever (sort of) gimmick they used was that every once in a while the movie skips as if it is old film catching in a projector to which they invariably say 'What was that?'

Our ship should be landing any time now...

But experts should know, right? And viewers - well, I guess they picked up on the word 'cerebral', looked it up, and decided that if they didn't like this movie and praise it profusely it would make them look like idiots. After all, if a film is described over and over as being 'engrossing' multi-layered', 'mind-bending', 'genre-bending' and having a 'meta-narrative' (A WHAT?), it must be above all of us low life horror junkies, right?

Well lovelies, don't believe things just because you read them. Make up your own mind. You just MAY find this movie extremely well done and spooky as hell. Or you might keep several steps ahead of the characters like I did and wait for the ending... that never comes. Just remember that if you see that Rotten Tomatoes gives it 100% on it's 'meter' that's from EIGHT people's reviews. Hardly an adequate representation of the typical viewer. And the reviewers who like to use big words to describe this movie - that does not make them smarter than you. If you think this movie sucks too - hey, you're just as smart. Maybe smarter because you recognize tired references disguised as a 'clever horror mystery' and that you just spent 93 minutes getting confused for nothing.

The movie is about Mike and Chris. Mike is a normal guy who gets a strange email with a video attachment. It's a video of his friend Chris, fried out of his mind on crack and shooting at birds while screaming about noise. The email contains a map where he can be found. That Mike thinks this is coming from Chris himself is the first major DUH in this movie and there's a lot of them - I don't care how 'cerebral' and 'spine-chilling' some describe it - it's been done. Many times.

He finds him in a dilapidated one room building. Chris denies sending Mike anything - he doesn't even have a computer (What. A. Shock.) and after a minute or two of bland conversation Mike attacks Chris and handcuffs him to some kind of pipe, telling him that he's gonna be drying out for seven days, and then if he still wants to kill himself with drugs, Mike will just let him go. Chris is understandably pissed - and scared. He's realized that while being high he's lost a shipment of drugs he was supposed to deliver, plus he owes his drug connection money anyway for 'borrowing' some of the product from them when his check (from where is not said) didn't come.

Now I'm no expert on crack and what it can do to you but I've got a pretty good idea that going cold turkey is going to be... messy. Chris is going to be a puking, gross mess who can't sleep and will scream for hours, right? Not in this movie. While it's obvious that he is a loser (and he accepts that), and that intervention will just delay the inevitable, they make him 'likable'. I'm quoting another source here. I thought they were both self-serving and bloody annoying.

So while Chris is detoxing in a very unrealistically clean manner, Mike gets bored and starts to roam around the nothing that this house is in the middle of. He starts finding weird items - pictures, slides, journals - in other words, all kinds of media upon and in which are horrifying images and stories of betrayal, murder and always death. The people seem to come from all over. Mike tells Chris (who, in the throes of withdrawal could care less) that they all seem to be 'stories' about people (like it's all fiction). I guess we're supposed to be horrified and terrified when we learn that this stuff actually happened. Nope. I had that on my notepad as soon as Mike watched the impossible email in the beginning.

Funny, you don't look like a native...

We get a couple of people making brief appearances to break up this snore fest including three wearing-aluminum-hats type UFO seekers (kidding - no hats), and several American Indians show up at the house. Mike learns that Chris is actually squatting - the building is on the edge of the Reservation and no one is allowed to be there without the approval of the Tribal Council. Mike bribes him for just a couple of days to get his friend clean enough to take him to rehab. He delivers the guy's money at his job at the local casino (oh no, this isn't racist or anything <inserting heavy sarcasm>) and the guy repeatedly tells him that they need to get out of there. Mike thinks he means because they're squatting (DUH) but we know he's warning him because before he had told him there were a lot of drug addicts buried around the reservation. Uh huh.

Pretty pretty pretty little mirror...

Mike then meets a Frenchman (briefly but pleasantly played by Bill Oberst Jr.) who tells him he was there with two students who were studying local 'tales' but soon the two were fighting and screaming about stolen ideas, research, etc. - until finally they disappeared. Thirty years ago. He stayed because he hates mankind in general, and spends his days smoking an exotic type of marijuana he got in South America. Uh huh.

Wow, I'm glad we got those two killed instead of us...

Let me fast forward this for you - everything Mike finds, from film to slides to stories to pictures never show anything good happening to the people in them and he still refers to them as 'stories'. Until he finds the video tape. On it is about two seconds worth - of him and Chris when he first arrived. Shaken Mike begins to suspect this has a supernatural cause while Chris just thinks the government must be spying on them. But then the slide projector kicks on, showing both men dead - which Mike takes as a threat that that's what will happen to them if they try to leave.

Chris is still calling BS (so am I) until Mike's computer kicks on and shows the two in real time right that second. It then gets ahead of them by a couple of seconds. Then it fast forwards and shows their demise at the hands of the pissed off drug dealers. He lets Chris loose and they get out of there. Mike now figures that whatever is leaving all this stuff around is trying to help them. Massive DUH. Everyone he found in the different media died soon after - and they're going to live?

Yeah, next time make it GOOD...

So they hide, the two dealers looking for their stuff show up and trash the place - then two MORE people show up (no I still don't know who they were), shoot the two and set the place on fire. After those two leave, our, uh, friends walk up to the house and look at the mess. Mike says 'At least we gave it a happy ending.' Soon... the film wavers, we hear weird spooky noises and the camera angle goes up as if something large is appearing in front of them. Mike says 'Can we try it another way?' aaaaaand the screen goes blank and we're done. Yeah, that was real original. YAWN.

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About Miss Murder

Thanks to good ole' Google whining about some missing ad revenue, we are being squeezed out (even the tiny ones like me) by the increasingly stupid and invasive standards of practice they keep adopting while trying to tell us it was that way all along. Meanwhile they rub their hands together thinking about all that Red Tube and YouTube TV money coming in - content creators be damned.